We all know that with the end of December quickly approaching, Santa is busy getting everything set for his worldwide tour. Tim Allen’s, erm, Kris Kringle’s boots are mighty big, but the carbon footprint he leaves behind is even bigger. Ethical Ocean took a look at Santa’s environmental impact, and tried to see if they could help him run a slightly more eco-friendly operation.
Hot on the heels of Jérôme D’Ambrosio’s home Grand Prix in Belgium, Marussia Virgin Racing is pleased to announce a new partnership with Belgian company Soleco ahead of this weekend’s final European round of the 2011 FIA Formula One World Championship in Italy.
Based in Opglabbeek, Soleco is an environmental company that transforms sunshine into electricity through photovoltaic systems such as solar panels and inverters. Soleco pledged their support to Jérôme after he, along with other drivers from the Gravity Sport Management stable, made a personal commitment to offset the carbon footprint associated with his Formula One racing career.
The new partnership will see the Soleco logo appearing on Jérôme’s racesuit and helmet, as well as on the Marussia Virgin Racing MVR-02 race car, for the balance of the 2011 season.
Andy Webb, CEO, Marussia Virgin Racing
“We are delighted to welcome Soleco to Marussia Virgin Racing and congratulations to Jérôme. He has acquitted himself well in his debut year of Formula One racing and it is very positive for him to have attracted the attentions of an emerging Belgian company.”
Bob Geekens, CEO, Soleco
“After many years, finally there is a Belgian driver back in Formula One and Soleco is pleased to be the first Belgian company to support Jérôme on his journey. To underpin its international activities, Soleco Green Energy has found a perfect ambassador in Jérôme and the Marussia Virgin Racing team. This partnership will help us to develop our international ambitions and Soleco will benefit from excellent strategic marketing opportunities. Jérôme is committed to offsetting his carbon emissions. To do so, Soleco will compensate his carbon footprint by investing in renewable energy projects and donating some of the returns to charity and the development of carbon neutral projects and products.”
The TV footage over the past week showing farmers in Spain having to discard huge amounts of cucumbers because of false suspicions relating to the E coli outbreak is heartbreaking. What an utter waste. But what really got to me was the thought of how much water was being wasted. Just think how much water it must take to grow a cucumber in an arid place such as Spain. Given that we are also experiencing drought-like conditions here in parts of the UK, it left me curious to know which fruit and veg consume the most water when they are being grown?
T Keeble, by email
Without Spain’s water-intensive agriculture sector much of northern Europe would struggle during the winter months to feed itself on “summer” crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers and melons.
It has long been noted that every time we bite into, say, a Spanish-grown tomato we are consuming Spanish water – a resource that is in increasingly short supply. As a result, a new environmental yardstick has come to the fore in recent years: the water footprint.
The water footprint of food stuffs such as beef, rice and wheat are known to be proportionately much higher than most fruit and vegetables. Arecent report by WRAP and WWF examined how much water is wasted in the UK when food is thrown away. It found that nearly two-thirds of this wasted embedded water originated outside the UK. Perhaps surprisingly, it was Ghana’s water-intensive cocoa beans that caused it to rank first in the list of countries for which the UK’s wastes water. This is because it takes, on average, 24,000 litres of water to produce just one kilogram of chocolate, according to the Water Footprint Network. By comparison, one kilogram of tomatoes requires 160 litres of water. (For the full breakdown of food types, view the table on page 54 of this PDF.)
But would this information about embedded water in food change your shopping or eating habits? And what about other “inputs”? Would knowing the carbon footprint of food items affect your decision-making?
Oranges rotting on a London market stall. Wasting food leads to the waste of huge quantities of water. Photograph: Martin Godwin
As consumers throw millions of tonnes of uneaten food into the bin each year, few give a thought to the hidden cost of such waste – the water that it took to grow the food.
But new research shows that we throw away, on average, twice as much water per year in the form of uneaten food as we use for washing and drinking.
What is worse, increasing amounts of our food comes from countries where water is scarce, meaning the food we discard has a huge hidden impact on the depletion of valuable water resources across the world.
According to the first comprehensive study into the impact of the “embedded water” in the UK’s food waste on world water supplies, more than a 5% of the water used by the UK is thrown away in the form of uneaten food.
The research was carried out by the government’s Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) and the green campaigning groupWWF, and is published with the title: Water and Carbon Footprint of Household Food Waste in the UK.
The water used to produce food thrown away by households in the UK amounts to about 6.2bn cubic metres a year.
That represents 6% of the UK’s total water footprint, which includes water used in industry and agriculture.
About a quarter of the water used to grow and process the wasted food originates in the UK, but much of it comes from countries that are already experiencing water stress.
Green campaigners have for years called for more attention to be paid to “hidden” or “embedded” water – water that is used in the production of all sorts of goods, from food and clothing to cars and furniture, and which represents a hidden cost on exports.
As more countries suffer from water scarcity, these exports can further deplete natural resources and cause environmental problems such as salination – which can render land unfit for growing crops – and higher prices for water to poorer consumers.
Food waste carries another environmental cost: it accounts for about 3% of the UK’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to the amount generated by 7m cars each year.
That is enough to cancel out the greenhouse gases saved each year by British households’ recycling efforts.
Liz Goodwin, chief executive at Wrap, said: “These figures are quite staggering. Although greenhouse gas emissions have been widely discussed, the water used to produce food and drink has been overlooked until recently.
“However, growing concern over the availability of water in the UK and abroad, and security of the supply of food, means that it is vital we understand the connections between food waste, water and climate change.”
She said the organisation – which is threatened with budget cuts – would work further with retailers, food and drink companies and local authorities to reduce the amount of food wasted.
David Tickner, head of freshwater programmes at WWF, said consumers could make a “small but very significant” contribution to reducing water stress if they tried to avoid wasting so much food.
Most tumble dryers are powered by electricity, which is an inefficient way to create heat.
Photograph: Getty Images
Depending on how you do it, and how many loads you get through each week, laundry can contribute a surprising amount to your carbon footprint. Washing and drying a load every two days creates around 440kg of CO2e each year, which is equivalent to flying from London to Glasgow and back with 15-mile taxi rides to and from the airports.
Modern washing powders work just as well at 30°C, so there is a very simple saving to be had here of 100g per wash just by turning the temperature down. But the much bigger savings relate to drying. As the numbers above show, for a typical 40°C wash nearly three-quarters of the carbon footprint comes from the drying rather than the washing – which reflects the general rule of thumb that the more heat an appliance generates, the more energy it takes to run.
Part of the problem is that tumble dryers (like dishwashers and washing machines) generally use electricity to generate their heat. This is typically more than twice as carbon-intensive as creating heat from gas – for the simple reason that, in the case of electricity, most of the energy in the fuel gets wasted up the cooling tower of a power plant, with yet more getting lost in transmission to the home. Gas tumble-dryers do exist but aren’t yet popular, despite consuming far less energy.
However your dryer is powered, if you use a conventional vented model, most of the heat is simply pumped out to the outside world, which is sensible in the summer but wasteful in the colder months when you will simultaneously be heating the home by other means. Unvented condensing dryers use a little bit more energy per cycle, but in the winter all that heat stays inside your house, where theoretically it should reduce the burden on the heating system. So the relative impact of each depends on whether you use the dryer all year around or just in the winter when the clothes-lines doesn’t work as well. (Where the machine is positioned is also relevant, as the captured heat will be more of a benefit in, say, the kitchen, than it will in a garage.)
Ultimately, though, all tumble drying is wasteful. A household running a dryer 200 times a year could save nearly half a tonne of CO2e by switching to a clothes rack or washing line. When drying clothes inside on a rack, the evaporation from the wet fabrics will cool the home to cool down a fraction but this is a marginal effect – and although it’s a disadvantage in the winter, it’s a bonus on a hot summer’s day, when you’ll get some free air conditioning.
Whichever way you dry you clothes, it makes sense to use a washer with a good spin function. It is much quicker and more efficient to remove most of the water by spinning it off than by evaporating it in a dryer.
All the figures listed above are based on a full 5kg load (half loads use a little less energy each time but they work out as much less efficient per garment washed). They include around 220g per wash for the embodied emissions in the appliances themselves. If this estimate is correct, the manufacture and delivery of the appliances accounts for nearly 10% of the total carbon footprint of each wash.
You can probably improve on the lifetime of your washer and/or dryer if you look after it and get it repaired when it breaks. Switching from a typical 1998 machine to a new one with an ‘A’ rating might gain you around 10% in efficiency – just enough to offset the emissions created in the new machine’s manufacture and delivery. In other words, unless your machine is particularly cranky and inefficient there is no real carbon case for getting a new one unless you have to.
The final piece of the puzzle is the frequency with which you wash stuff. No one wants to go around smelly, but it’s worth at least asking the question: does stuff go in the wash unnecessarily often? If you can reduce the number of loads you do without yourself or anyone else noticing any difference, there is a time saving to be had, too.
© Susetta Bozzi / WWF Canon
Beijing is changing fast. A hoarding showing the future of Beijing cover a construction site. In 2008 Beijing had the greatest footprint per person in China.
Beijing, China – Addressing carbon emissions and urban development will be crucial if China is to continue to improve well-being without costing the planet, says a new report launched today.
The “China Ecological Footprint Report 2010”, jointly published by WWF and China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), explores the country’s challenges and opportunities in an increasingly resource-constrained world.
Over the past three decades China’s per capita income has grown by more than 50 times as a result of economic development. However, rapid industrialization, urban development and intensive agriculture have increased the pressure on nature.
“Our environment is the basis for life and human development. Due to rapid social and economic development in recent years, environmental issues are increasingly becoming a bottleneck for future economic growth,” said Zhu Guangyao, Secretary General of CCICED. “The next twenty years will be critical for China to realize sustainable development. With this in mind, it is the goal of the Chinese government to accelerate the formation of a resource efficient and environmentally-friendly society.”
A world consuming resources and producing wastes at Chinese levels for 2007 would need the equivalent of 1.2 planets to support its activities, compared to 0.8 of a planet at 2003 Chinese consumption levels. The global average in 2007 was 1.5 planets, meaning that it would take 1.5 years for the Earth to regenerate the resources used and to absorb the CO2 emitted that year.
Carbon emissions and individual wealth have become the major factors influencing China’s Ecological Footprint.
“Raising awareness of China’s footprint is a crucial step in China’s efforts to improve the well-being of its people without jeopardizing their future,” said Jim Leape, WWF International Director General. “This analysis tells us that to achieve its goal of a ‘harmonious society,’ China must find ways to grow its economy while protecting the natural systems upon which the economy, and society, depend – from the Yangtze River to the Amazon forest.”
In 2008, carbon footprint associated with energy demand for buildings, transport, consumption of goods and provision of public services account for more than half of China’s Ecological Footprint in 29 of China’s 31 provinces. In the municipalities of Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin, and in the industrialized province of Shangdong this portion exceeds 65 percent.
“The analysis clearly indicated the importance of China moving quickly to a low carbon development model and the crucial role that will be played by energy efficiency, cleaner energy and the push to sustainable cities,” Leape said.
There are clear differences between rural and urban areas, primarily due to income gaps and consequent variations in consumption and energy utilization.
“Crucial role that will be played by energy efficiency, cleaner energy and the push to sustainable cities.”
The analysis suggests that for provinces where per capita GDP exceeds RMB 30,000 (approximately US$ 4,500), Ecological Footprint increases in parallel. In China high-income segments of population are overwhelmingly located in cities, and Ecological Footprint of cities is 1.4 to 2.5 times greater than rural areas.
In 2008 Beijing had the greatest footprint per person and Yunnan has the smallest. Between 1985 and 2008 Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Guangdong and Chongqing have seen the greatest overall growth in their footprint per person.
There are, however, promising signs of China’s attempt to achieve sustainable development. The rate of increase in Ecological Footprint has slowed down in most Chinese provinces during 2005-2008 in comparison to 2000-2005. In Beijing, this trend is attributed to a more stable rate of urbanization, together with energy conservation measures and to the transition from a manufacturing to a service economy.
“Today China’s global influence is greater than at any time in recent history and by reducing pressure on natural resources through better management and increased efficiency, the country can play an important role in sustaining the global environment while gaining competitiveness,” Leape said.
New houses such as these ones in South Derbyshire take lots of energy and resources to produce. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA
The carbon footprint of building a house depends on all kinds of things – including, of course, the size of the house and the types of materials chosen.
The estimate of 80 tonnes given above is for the construction of a brand-new cottage with two bedrooms upstairs and two reception rooms and a kitchen downstairs. It’s based on a study that I was involved in for Historic Scotland. The study looked at the climate change implications of various options for a traditional cottage in Dumfries: leave it as it is, refurbish, or knock it down and build a new one to various different building codes. We looked at the climate change impact over a 100-year period, taking into account the embodied emissions in the construction and maintenance as well as the energy used and generated by those living in the building.
Unsurprisingly, the worst option by far was to do nothing and leave the old house leaking energy like a sieve. Knocking down and starting again worked out at about 80 tonnes CO2e whether the house was built to 2008 Scottish building regulations or to the much more stringent and expensive Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5 that demanded ‘carbon neutrality’.
Here’s how that total broke down for the carbon-neutral option:
• Walls 60%
• Timber 14%
• Pipework and drainage 9%
• Floors 5%
• Slate roof 5%
• Photovoltaic panels 3%
• Other 4%
80 tonnes is a lot – equivalent to five brand-new family cars, about six years of living for the average Brit or 24 economy-class trips to Hong Kong from London. But a house may last for a century or more, so the annual carbon cost is much less – and for all the new-build options, the up-front emissions from construction work were paid back by savings from better energy efficiency in 15–20 years.
However, the winning option was to refurbish the old house, because the carbon investment of doing this was just 8 tonnes CO2e, and even the highest-specification newbuild could not catch up this advantage over the 100-year period. Once cost was taken into account, refurbishment became dramatically the most practical and attractive option, too.
If this one study is representative, the message for the construction industry is clear. Investment in the very highest levels of energy-efficiency for new homes is, even at its best, an extremely costly way of saving carbon. Investing in improvements to existing homes is dramatically more cost-effective.
S2C Global Systems is promising tanker deliveries but high cost might make it just a pipe dream
An Indian farmer looks towards the sky, while standing amidst his drought-stricken crop. US company S2C Global Systems hopes to ship water from Alaska to India.
Photograph: Dipak Kumar/Reuters
Imagine an oil tanker plowing through the ocean, hauling valuable cargo from resource-rich nations of the world to the countries that need it: but instead of oil, the tanker holds millions of gallons of fresh water.
It’s not a vision from some futuristic film or doomsday novel, but the present-day intention of companies trying to launch the bulk water export business. The idea has been around since the 1990′s, yet no one has succeeded in making it a practical reality.
But last July, the US company S2C Global Systems, Inc. became the latest bulk water wanna-be by announcing it would begin shipping water from Alaska to India within the next six to eight months. Using large class vessels that can hold 50 million gallons at a time, S2C plans to sell the water for both manufacturing and drinking purposes to countries around the Arabian Sea.
“I think it’s a dream,” said Peter Gleick, a scientist and international water expert, in an interview with SolveClimate News. Gleick is President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security. “I don’t think bulk water transfers of any significant volume are ever going to happen, because the cost of moving water, especially across the ocean, is so high.”
Rod Bartlett, managing partner of Alaska Resource Management (a partnership between S2C and True Alaska Bottling), told SolveClimate News that S2C is finalizing legal issues and logistics for a “World Water Hub” on the western coast of India. Once it’s built, the hub will be a distribution point from which the company plans to deliver water to target destinations in the Middle East and northern Africa.
“Every nation within a four-day target of the hub is a potential customer or client that will need fresh water,” said Bartlett. Without revealing specific details, Bartlett added that S2C has received both spoken and “written expressions of interest.”
The water S2C plans to export will come from Alaska’s Blue Lake near the city of Sitka, about 90 miles southwest of Juneau. Since 1999, Sitka has promoted itself as a source for bulk water exports; True Alaska Bottling owns the water rights to 8 million gallons per day from Blue Lake.
As to why humans would want to move water around the world, Bartlett explained: “(You move the water) because you can’t move the population.” Most of the world’s freshwater is found near the Poles, while most people live closer to the equator.
Population growth, urbanization and irrigation place are creating increasing demand for water. But climate change is exacerbating the problem of supply, most notably in the Himalayan region, often referred to as Asia’s water tower.
According to a report from King’s College in London, about two-thirds of the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking, and decreased runoff will affect water levels in ten major rivers. All together, the rivers’ drainage basins are home to 1.3 billion people—close to one-fifth of the world’s population.
Many of them live in India. S2C originally chose to build their hub there because they couldn’t find an appropriate port in the Middle East. But now, said Bartlett, “as you continue to look at the potential in India, it’s going to be a natural place to sell water soon, no question about it.”
Desalinated Water 18 Times Cheaper
The idea of moving vast quantities of water is hardly new. The Romans did it with aqueducts; today, California pipes the Colorado River’s water hundreds of miles into its cities and farms. But when you ship water more than 1000 or 1500 miles, said Gleick, “the diesel costs kill you.”
International water shipments do occur on small geographic scales. In 1997, Greece began shipping water to the island of Aegina, 13 miles from the Greek coast. Singapore currently imports freshwater from Malaysia but vowed to build desalination plants for increased water security. A plan for Turkey to sell water to Israel was recently suspended due to political tension between the two nations.
What S2C has proposed—moving water halfway around the world, 50 million gallons at a time—is on a scale that dwarfs existing bulk water transfer efforts.
The biggest problem, said Gleick, is that S2C will be competing with desalination plants, which are very popular in the Middle East. “Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are almost completely dependent on desalinated (sea)water.”
Water from desalination plants costs about $1/cubic meter (this price includes the cost of building and running the plant), said Gleick. According to Bartlett, it will cost S2C $18/cubic meter to move the water from Alaska to India.
In order to make a profit, the company would then have to mark up the price before selling to customers. Some of the water will be sold in bulk to pharmaceuticals and manufacturers; the rest will be bottled for drinking. And after days in storage on board the ship, the water will need further processing before it’s clean enough to sell, further adding to the company’s costs.
Despite the abundance of cheap desalinated water, Bartlett believes that desalination has its drawbacks. In an email to SolveClimate News, he wrote that the process of purifying seawater has environmental impacts (such as pollution from the fossil fuels that power the plant). He also said that the desalinated water can leach minerals out of pipes, making the water less palatable.
Gleick acknowledged that the price of desalinated water doesn’t take into account the environmental costs. However, he said that the mineral-leaching problem comes from overly purified water and can be easily solved. Plant operators will either add minerals back into the desalinated water or mix it with existing tapwater. “This is routine (at) desalination plants.”
“(The process of) reverse osmosis can turn seawater into potable water,” said Gleick. After that, “you basically tune the system to the kind of water you want.”
Nevertheless, Bartlett was optimistic about his company’s future. In his opinion, S2C overcame a major hurdle by finding a deepwater port in India that can accommodate the large class vessels. It also helps that the ports at either end are quipped to load and unload the water quickly. Every day that a ship sits in port costs the company $50,000-$60,000.
But all those problems, said Gleick, are insignificant compared to the cost of transport. At the end of the day, S2C’s water is more than 18 times more expensive than existing sources.
Move to Ban Water Exports
Logistics and pricing aside, the mere idea of turning water into another internationally traded commodity has drawn mixed reactions.
Canada, which owns more freshwater resources than any other country, is moving to ban bulk exports. Greenland, Iceland and New Zealand are searching for investors.
Bartlett argued that bulk water trade would hardly make a difference in the grand scheme of things. For context, S2C’s maximum potential allocation from Blue Lake is 12 billion gallons per year (37,000 acre-feet), less than one percent of California’s yearly allotment (4.4 million acre-feet) from the Colorado River.
Bartlett said that S2C hopes to build two more Water Hubs, one in the Caribbean and another near eastern China.
Gleick remained doubtful about the success of the India venture: “I would be hugely surprised if this passed any economic or practical test…until I see a contract and an actual shipment, I’m going to remain skeptical.”
Agriculture imposes a heavy and growing burden on Europe’s water resources, threatening water shortages and damage to ecosystems. To achieve sustainable water use, farmers must be given the right price incentives, advice and assistance.
Food is intrinsically bound to human well-being. Besides the importance of good food for good health and the pleasure we derive from eating, agricultural production plays a vital role supporting individual livelihoods and the wider economy.
Picture by H2O-C (source: Wikimedia Commons)
But food production also consumes a lot of water – an equally vital resource. Agriculture accounts for 24 % of water abstraction in Europe and while that might not sound like much compared to the 44 % abstracted for cooling water in energy production, its impact on reserves is much greater. Whereas almost all cooling water is returned to a water body, for agriculture the figure is often just a third.
In addition, agricultural water use is unevenly spread. In some southern European regions, agriculture accounts for more than 80 % of water abstraction. And peak abstraction typically occurs in the summer when water is least available, maximizing detrimental impacts.
The EEA’s recent report, Water resources across Europe — confronting water scarcity and drought, describes the grave impacts of excessive abstraction. Over exploiting resources increases the likelihood of severe water shortages during dry periods. But it also means diminished water quality (because pollutants are less diluted) and the risk of salt water intrusion into groundwater in coastal regions. River and lake ecosystems can also be severely affected, harming or killing plants and animals, when water levels drop or dry out completely.
The results are evident in many southern European regions. For example:
• in Turkey’s Konya Basin, abstraction for irrigation — much of it drawn from illegally drilled wells — has severely reduced the surface area of the country’s second largest lake, Lake Tuz;
• in Greece’s Argolid Plain, chloride toxicity due to saltwater intrusion is apparent in leaf burns and defoliation; boreholes have dried up or been abandoned because of excessive salinity;
• in Cyprus, severe water shortages in 2008 necessitated importing water using tankers, cutting domestic supplies and significantly increasing prices.
Flawed incentives
Water use in agriculture is evidently becoming unsustainable in some parts of Europe, suggesting that regulatory and pricing mechanisms have failed to manage demand effectively.
Farmers shift to water-intensive irrigation methods because of the productivity gains on offer. In Spain, for example, the 14 % of agricultural land irrigated yields more than 60 % of the total value of agricultural products.
Clearly, however, farmers will only irrigate if increased yields outweigh the costs of installing irrigation systems and abstracting large amounts of water. In this regard, national and European
policies have created unfortunate incentives. Farmers seldom pay the full resource and environmental cost of large, publicly managed irrigation systems (especially if laws proscribing or limiting abstraction are not effectively enforced). And until recent reforms, EU subsidies often incentivised water-intensive cultivation.
The scale of water use that ensues can be startling. WWF analysed the irrigation of four crops in
Spain during 2004 and found that almost 1 billion m3 of water was used just producing surpluses over EU quotas. That equals the household consumption of more than 16 million people.
Climate change is likely to worsen the situation. First, hotter, drier summers will enhance pressures on water resources. Second, the EU and its Member States have committed that biofuels should provide 10 % of transport fuel by 2020. If growing demand for bioenergy is met using current first generation energy crops then agricultural water use will grow.
Which way now?
Irrigated agriculture is central to local and national economies in parts of Europe. In some areas, ceasing irrigation could lead to land abandonment and severe economic hardship. Agricultural water use must therefore be made more efficient not only to ensure enough water for irrigation but also for local people, a healthy environment and other economic sectors.
Water pricing represents the core mechanism to incentivise levels of water use that balance society’s economic, environmental and social goals. Research demonstrates that if prices reflect true costs, illegal extraction is effectively policed, and water is paid for by volume then farmers will reduce irrigation or adopt measures to improve water efficiency. National and EU subsidies can provide additional inducements to adopt water saving techniques.
Once the incentives are in place, farmers can choose from a variety of technologies, practices and crops to reduce water use. Governments again have a crucial role to play here, providing information, advice and education to ensure that farmers are aware of the options, and supporting further research. Particular focus should go on ensuring that the introduction of energy crops to meet biofuels targets serves to reduce agricultural water demand, rather than increasing it.
Finally, after efforts to reduce demand have been exploited, farms can also take advantage of opportunities to draw on alternative supplies. In Cyprus and Spain, for example, treated wastewater has been used to irrigate crops with encouraging results.
It’s a question that green experts get asked all the time: what’s the best way to dry your hands?
The Dyson Airblade saves energy by using motion rather than heat to dry hands.
Photograph: Sarah Lee / Guardian
‘What’s the greenest way to dry my hands?’ is a frequently asked question, so I’ll answer it despite the fact that if you really want a lower-carbon lifestyle you should be asking about something much more important – such as driving, flying or home heating.
Close to the low end of the scale at just 3g of CO2e is drying your hands with a Dyson Airblade. This dryer does the job in about 10 seconds with 1.6 kilowatts of power. Its secret is that it doesn’t heat the air – it just blows it hard. This makes it far more efficient than conventional hand driers.
In the middle of the spectrum I have put paper towels, based on 10g of low-quality recycled paper per sheet, and only one towel used each time. Of course, if you use two or three towels, as many people do, the footprint doubles or triples.
At the high end, at about 20g of CO2e per go, are conventional heated hand dryers. These take a shade longer than the Dyson and use around 6 kilowatts of power. The big difference in electricity consumption is explained by the fact that it always takes a lot of energy to create heat.
Right at the bottom of the scale comes not drying your hands at all – or indeed using a small hand towel that is reused many times in between low-temperature washes. I am not a hygiene expert but I’m told that neither option is good from that point of view. And if you were to pick up something nasty from a communal hand towel, that could even even end up adding to the already substantial carbon footprint of the health service.
